1 plus 1 is 2

I've been knitting a little lately, but mostly it has been spinning and acquiring spinning wheels. One of the women I spin with offered me one of her wheels at a very reasonable price (the little peggy in the foregroud) and later that same evening I won an auction on trade-me for another (similar, but different ;) wheel for very cheap as well. Had either one of them been much more expensive I would have had to choose, but now I get to learn on 2 different wheels. And although they look very similar one is a double drive and the other is a single drive (meaning that they have different personalities). I obviously need to master both! Plus now when people come to visit me from the states they can learn how to spin (without hoggin' my wheel), yeah I'm practical like that. So come on over statesiders, we'll spin together!

I also finished spinning and plying some wool I was working on the last time I posted. The colors still aren't "me" but I think the yarn turned out pretty well nonetheless.

Since I spun the orange second, and my spinning is obviously still being refined, it turned out a lot thinner than the multi fiber. The varying thicknesses show up in the skeins too which I thought was pretty interesting, but not that surprising. Anywho, so I had quite a bit of orange left over after the plying so I decided to use the remainder to learn how to navajo ply. It was very awkward at first, but I got the hang of it. Now I just have to work on my technique.

I now have about 7 pretty good sized hanks of my own handspun yarn... maybe I should think about knitting them sometime soon... I still haven't knit anything that I have spun which I find pretty amusing.

In nonfiber news (there is such a thing?) it is still rainy and cold here in New Zealand. A few days of intermittent sunshine snuck in last week, but nothing substantial enough to satiate those of us longing for some warm weather. It snowed last night with some sleet and rain mixed in. The hills above us look beautiful with their dusting. I love when it snows here because it never last longer than a day and is usually followed by sunshine. Maybe tomorrow we'll get a warm sunny day?...